ARC, Legatum and Fake Freedom Funds
More on the serpent of impact investment, funding, people and propaganda
We’ve been chatting recently about how the serpent is beginning to eat its own tail. In
’s insightful book, he assures us this self-destruction is inevitable. And for many of us, it can’t come soon enough.For instance, we heard how Moderna lost its patent case against Pfizer. And also that 98% of Americans seem to have seen the light, deciding not to pursue endless boosters (that put them at more risk of infection and death) forcing tonnes of toxic vials to be destroyed. And with them, shareholders profits.
The Censorship Industrial Complex, Omidyar and Freedom Fund
Here, the subtext is another way that this totalitarianism is imploding in on itself. Albeit not quite so obvious to the man-in-the-street. Journalist Michael Shellenberger, who is central to the release of the Twitter Files and coined the term Censorship Industrial Complex (pdf of his legal testimony) in a massive US Court battle, has joined the Board of a company which is funded by the same Omidyar Group that is the Censorship Industrial Complex. (See pg14 of his hyperlinked testimony above). How can this be? Let me explain.
I was watching this excellent (1 hour) interview over the weekend called ‘Criminalising Dissent’ with Glenn Greenwald, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen. The context included the universal influence of the Omidyar Group on free speech and independent media. Re the evolution of Glenn Greenwald’s own long-running (if somewhat bemusing) fight against Omidyar’s First Look Media aka the Censorship Industrial Complex, there’s an interesting historical perspective expanded upon here, by Alison McDowell of A Wrench in the Gears.
Another important part of this jigsaw is the Institute for Non-Profit News, funded by the Knight Foundation which fund $300million ‘training’ in journalism. At first glance, the title may present itself as genuinely free-speech, but it doesn’t take much time at all to reveal just another Astroturf organisation. Their website lists their US$500k+ donors, which are: The Democracy Fund (aka the Omidyar Group); The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (impact investment); The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation (politics and media) and the Google News Initiative. Read this important article to gain more insight into these nefarious associations of censorship.
Whether it’s Media Matters, First Look Media or NewsGuard, it seems the true investigative journalists of the past, have all been captured. From the training, scholarships and apprenticeships the individuals are indoctrinated into the ‘new normal’. These corporates which control the fake fact-checkers are all interconnected within the Censorship Industrial Complex -controlling the narrative and silencing dissent:
The latest message from Google on my iPhone is a stark reminder of the slowly boiling frog of ‘Middleware’ that is now filtering information via our browsers (with many still totally unaware of this interference).
Personally, putting journalism aside for the moment, I have a particular level of despair at the way that academics have become too lazy, lacking in critical thinking skills and/or captured to establish some basic ethical writing skills. I have explained some of the mechanisms of this capture here. And Prof Tim Hayward has researched this extensively for
, for instance see here.I reject this ‘new normal’ in every way. To negotiate this quagmire of tendentiousness, it’s crucial to recognize the difference between carefully articulated words, that play to a particularly-targeted and propagandized audience, and evidence and sources of funding of those words, driven by the ideology of those corporate entities. And with these differences front of mind, I return to the problematic entity that is Jordan Peterson’s ARC. Although ARC may sell itself on being a new libertarian, anti-woke, free-speech advocate, we only need to scratch beneath the surface to reveal the same behemoth entities that are controlling the narrative. As we explained at length here:
I’ve written this summary about the source of funding for ARC and Legatum’s End Fund . Yes, it has direct links to the Clinton’s, Blair’s and Gates Foundations and (of course) the World Economic Forum, United Nations, World Health Organization and USAID. These are the same impact investments groups which profit from poverty. Corporate giants like eBay, PayPal, Palantir, Flourish (AI banking), First Look Media (Google News Initiative, (Fake) Fact Checkers NewsGuard, Democracy Fund (Omidyar)… the list goes on.
So what? Why these connections are important
To those people who try to claim it’s impossible to avoid these corporate giants, we can happily remind them that local comes first, that cash is king and we all have a choice in the ways we live our life, and who and what we support. We can choose to avoid the inevitable digital prison ahead. And I like to remind my students of our Circle of Control:
Impact Investment and Exploitation of African People
So bearing in mind Legatum’s close links to so many African impact investment projects, it’s perhaps unsurprising that another of the five main arms of the Legatum empire, The Freedom Fund, aims to address ‘modern slavery’.
Why is this not surprising? Because perhaps, just like the majority of domestic abuse cases, I’ve learned how looking closely at those entities claiming to be ‘supporting’ victims, tragically, these groups can sometimes perpetuate that harm. Maybe it’s that willful blindness Dr Aseem talks about, or something more sinister? From sick personalities like Jimmy Savile, to environmentalists claiming they are reducing toxic contamination - when we look at who benefits from funds and actions, clues emerge.
Let’s have a look at the major funding founder of the Freedom Fund - Humanity United. What do we find? Humanity United is part of the Omidyar Group intrinsically part of the profiteering and controlling entities like Paypal, eBay and the Google News Initiative….
So let’s backpedal slightly. Like many of these impact investment entities, the Freedom Fund is a registered charity in the UK and US and also a UK for-profit company. Created in Sept 2013 by Humanity United and Legatum, the third partner was ‘Walk Free’ aka Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest’s greenwashing of Fortescue Mining Group (FMG). It’s taken ten years’ planning to incorporate those important Australian politicians and celebrities like Sky’s Amanda Stoker, MP Andrew Hastie, past PMs John Anderson, John Howard and Tony Abbott and Net Zero Prof Robin Batterham all aboard Legatum’s new ARC.
Can you see it yet?
By Dec 2014, Nick Grono of Legatum was appointed CEO of the Freedom Fund and partnered with the Stardust Fund, which has strong connections with digital health technologies run by Johnson and Johnson and legacy media like Manseuto’s Fast Company. In 2016 the Freedom Fund arranged meetings with global leaders like then-UK PM Theresa May. They signed an MOU with the US Dept of State and partnered with the Clinton Foundation’s Global Initiative:
above screenshot from this promo video:
Fastforward to Jan 2017, and the Freedom Fund partnered with the UK Home Office for India and UBS Optimus Foundation for programmes in central Nepal. (I wrote about UBS and the links to the Vatican and WEF here).
In Oct 2019, just prior to the covid era that changed everything, the Freedom Fund was awarded a US$7m grant by the US Dept of State to run a programme to combat human slavery in Ethiopia. Incidentally, the US Dept of State has donated $billions into Ethiopia over recent years, including the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Service which is partnered with, you guessed it, the Clinton Foundation, Gavi, the World Bank and EthioTelecom, a digital comms provider. See this example of BigPharma/Chinese/UN education programmes. Needless to say, the ‘vaccine’ industry is growing exponentially in Africa, thanks to impact investment projects like Legatum’s Freedom and End Funds:
In April 2020 US$2million was donated from the Freedom Fund to Brazil and other ‘hot spots’ designated at risk from the impact of slave labour. In May of that year, The Freedom Fund’s three founders, Minderoo Foundation’s Walk Free initiative, Legatum Foundation and Humanity United committed a further $16m towards their mission to ‘end modern slavery’. Have they made any progress towards these aims? I can’t help wondering how much of that money actually reached those in need?
In June 2021 the Freedom Fund was apparently donated a “transformative gift of US$35million” from Ms McKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett. As I previously explained about the End Fund, Scott is the billionaire ex-wife of Amazon founder and king of fake-fact-checkers, Jeff Bezos. Apparently, she is currently worth US$39 billion. Dan Jewett is her most recent ex-husband. One of McKenzie’s finance partners is the Kepler Foundation, which funds a new university in Kigali, Rwanda. And I have written about my concerns about Rwanda, refugees and the UK Gov here.
In Oct 2021 the Freedom Fund received a further US$1.3m from the US Dept of State for a fight against slave labour in Brazil. Like Alison McDowell, I wonder what Brazil-based Glenn Greenwald thinks of this donation?
The Board of Directors included (until recently) Alan McCormick, Partner at Legatum whom I have previously described here. He has been replaced by Molly Gochman who is also CEO of the Stardust Fund – the major partner. Others on the Board include: Andrew Doust (Vice-chair), Founder, Plenitude Partners, Mahendra Pandey (Vice-chair), Senior Manager, Forced Labour and Human Trafficking, Humanity United, Katharine Bryant, Head of Policy and Programs, Walk Free, Natasha Dolby, Co-Founder, Freedom Forward; Vice President, Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund.
Current Main Funding Partners of Legatum’s Freedom Fund
The main partner entities of the Freedom Fund are: The Moondance Foundation; UBS Optimus Foundation; The ELMA Relief Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation – which I have already discussed here as part of Legatum’s End Fund. Ones I haven’t mentioned before are:
British Asian Trust was founded in 2007 by then Prince of Wales now King Charles and a group of British Asian business leaders “after a cricket match”. Their aim is “to tackle widespread poverty, inequality and injustice in South Asia.” In 2018 $11m launched the world’s largest education Development Impact Bond, supporting more than 200,000 children in India. Later, a £2.6m created a partnership with British Telecom in India, undoubtedly for a surveillance PPP.
The Dolby Family, which is a significant funder to the University of Cambridge, eg recently a $multimillion investment into a clinical research laboratory. The impact of these large donations on the validity of academic research has been written about extensively.
Dorothea Haus Ross Foundation a US-based charity focusing on helping abused and trafficked children, which partners with The Global Fund for Children which itself has some familiar named partners.
Laudes Foundation was only founded in 2020 and seems to be a spin-off from the textile industry for the C&A Foundation. This could be linked to the WEF health surveillance agenda of eTextiles.
Lisa Wolverton heads the Canadian educational charity, the Wolverton Trust and is also Chair of The Philanthropy Workshop (TPW), last month re-named Forward Global. Forward Global was founded in 1995 as a project of the Rockefeller Foundation. Inevitably therefore, many of their Board members have financial backgrounds with strong links to China. You can get a good idea of their objectives from the last meeting’s speakers. The next Forward Global Summit is in New York City on March 7 – 9, 2024 at the New York Stock Exchange where members plan to “explore the Impact Imperative for building a world that works for all.”
Finally, the Freedom Fund’s partner is The Millby Foundation which aims to promote gender equality in South Asia. It is interesting to note the Chair and Trustee, Canadian Michelle Yeu is also connected to TPW.
Conclusions
Is the serpent eating its tail? I hope so. When fellow Substacker
and I summarised the direct link between ARC, Legatum and the WEF UN SDG agenda, I’d hoped that would be enough for freedom-loving sceptics like us to grow some curiosity about ARC’s popularity. Its rise to fame came along without the hindrances usually dealt out to any counter-narrative voices by the Censorship Industrial Complex. I’d hoped to encourage a better understanding of the ever-growing impact investment profit-from-poverty empire. It is evil.The Censorship Industrial Complex will never be deconstructed if its actions are airbrushed-over by tendentious speeches of highly-paid ARC ‘celebrities’.
Now it seems the further I dig, the worse it gets. Here, I have set out the direct links between the founding funder of the $multimillion impact investment entity that is Legatum’s Freedom Fund with a central funder of the Censorship Industrial Complex - the Omidyar Group. (What are Shellenberger’s lawyers thinking of)?
It is also clear, from the additional investment partners I have listed above, that all these companies and associated pseudo-charities, and fake-fact-checker legacy media have symbiotic and parasitic relationships with BigPharma and other enterprises that have significant commercial interests in the progress of the unethical WEF/UN ESG/SDG agenda.
It’s time to exit the matrix. No-one is going going to save us - and definitely not Jordan Peterson, nor any of his colleagues from the ARC.
Got any reflections or amendments? Please post a comment and share!
I realise how industry subverts them but looking at the SDGs for the life of me i can't see how equality between men and women and climate action is unethical.
Thank you. Just far too many known Patsies to even give it a thought. But I could imagine those just waking up could be fooled by this. I suppose it’s just like moving the heard from one show to the next and they feel free cause they made the choice.